Wikimania is well over, and now that everyone is slowly getting home, I'd
like to touch on a hallway discussion that was going on during Wikimania.
This was regarding the centralnotice banners advertizing a livestream of
Katherine's and Christophe's presentation of the draft direction for the
2030 strategy.

I was quite taken by surprise with this, and taken aback. Here we were, the
Wikimedia community telling all these visitors of Wikipedia and other
projects that we are so important, that we should have them watch a
presentation of a first draft of a direction of a strategy that still needs
to be worked out. Not only was the text in the banner a bit misleading (I
didn't see much crystal bowl gazing - but rather a statement of where we
would like to go - but soit, I can overlook that), but it feels especially
pretentious to me. Maybe this is a cultural matter, and in other cultures
this kind of bragging (which is what it feels like to me) is normal.

I could have understood an advertizement of this and other sessions to our
logged in community members - that would actually have been a nice way of
engaging them in an expensive conference that we would like more online
audience to be part of. But only this session, and then all visitors of
Wikimedia projects? No, thanks.

Totally separate of the message displayed and whether we want to show it to
this kind of large audience, I was surprised that this link was pointing to
Youtube. This goes against our policies on Centralnotice
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Usage_guidelines>, stating:
"Wikimedia Owned - Banners must link to Wikimedia controlled domains (owned
either by Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia affiliates or Wikimedia
Volunteers identified to the Wikimedia Foundation)." I guess there is a
very remote interpretation possible that the channel is owned by the
Wikimedia Foundation, and I did not see any indication that Youtube was
running ads on that particular channel.

I was unable to locate any community discussions or consultation about
this. Could someone at the WMF share where this was discussed prior to the
decision, and could they explain their reasoning? I'm not looking to blame
anyone for this - shit happens - but I would like to see some discussion on
what we want and dont want to do in this field, so that we can actually
learn from this exercise. I was told in (very rapid and somewhat unwilling)
hallway discussions that this was signed off by multiple layers of
management at the WMF, so I assume some documented reasoning and
consultation is available.

Thanks for the e-mail on this. I'll get back to you after the weekend with
an expansive and complete response but wanted to acknowledge your e-mail
and agree that there is plenty to learn from, plenty that needs discussion
as a community and that we need to find out what our readers are interested
in receiving.

> Hi all,
>
> Wikimania is well over, and now that everyone is slowly getting home, I'd
> like to touch on a hallway discussion that was going on during Wikimania.
> This was regarding the centralnotice banners advertizing a livestream of
> Katherine's and Christophe's presentation of the draft direction for the
> 2030 strategy.
>
> First a few quick facts:
> The banners were on Fri 11 Aug shown for 1,5 hour in 'emergency mode' on
> all English language projects (including Commons, meta) to all logged in,
> anonimous and mobile visitors. The campaigns can be found here
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:> CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WikimaniaLive>,
> here
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:> CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WikimaniaLiveLoggedin>and
> here
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:> CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WikimaniaLiveMobile>,
> for reference. The text in the banner was "Where will Wikipedia and
> Wikimedia be in 2030? Find out LIVE from Montreal" with a link to a youtube
> page with a stream <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdr2F8aB9y0> .
>
> I was quite taken by surprise with this, and taken aback. Here we were, the
> Wikimedia community telling all these visitors of Wikipedia and other
> projects that we are so important, that we should have them watch a
> presentation of a first draft of a direction of a strategy that still needs
> to be worked out. Not only was the text in the banner a bit misleading (I
> didn't see much crystal bowl gazing - but rather a statement of where we
> would like to go - but soit, I can overlook that), but it feels especially
> pretentious to me. Maybe this is a cultural matter, and in other cultures
> this kind of bragging (which is what it feels like to me) is normal.
>
> I could have understood an advertizement of this and other sessions to our
> logged in community members - that would actually have been a nice way of
> engaging them in an expensive conference that we would like more online
> audience to be part of. But only this session, and then all visitors of
> Wikimedia projects? No, thanks.
>
> Totally separate of the message displayed and whether we want to show it to
> this kind of large audience, I was surprised that this link was pointing to
> Youtube. This goes against our policies on Centralnotice
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Usage_guidelines>, stating:
> "Wikimedia Owned - Banners must link to Wikimedia controlled domains (owned
> either by Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia affiliates or Wikimedia
> Volunteers identified to the Wikimedia Foundation)." I guess there is a
> very remote interpretation possible that the channel is owned by the
> Wikimedia Foundation, and I did not see any indication that Youtube was
> running ads on that particular channel.
>
> I was unable to locate any community discussions or consultation about
> this. Could someone at the WMF share where this was discussed prior to the
> decision, and could they explain their reasoning? I'm not looking to blame
> anyone for this - shit happens - but I would like to see some discussion on
> what we want and dont want to do in this field, so that we can actually
> learn from this exercise. I was told in (very rapid and somewhat unwilling)
> hallway discussions that this was signed off by multiple layers of
> management at the WMF, so I assume some documented reasoning and
> consultation is available.
>
> Best,
> Lodewijk
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: [hidden email]> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:[hidden email]?subject=unsubscribe>

adding my 5c to this discussion - the video has a bit more than 3500
views (3642 to be precise at the time i checked). I found the number of
views a bit contrary to the number of potential visualizations of
English WP sites.

all the best,
/gheorghe

On 18.08.2017 19:41, Joseph Seddon wrote:

> Hey Lodewijk,
>
> Thanks for the e-mail on this. I'll get back to you after the weekend with
> an expansive and complete response but wanted to acknowledge your e-mail
> and agree that there is plenty to learn from, plenty that needs discussion
> as a community and that we need to find out what our readers are interested
> in receiving.
>
> Seddon
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 1:45 PM, Lodewijk <[hidden email]>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Wikimania is well over, and now that everyone is slowly getting home, I'd
>> like to touch on a hallway discussion that was going on during Wikimania.
>> This was regarding the centralnotice banners advertizing a livestream of
>> Katherine's and Christophe's presentation of the draft direction for the
>> 2030 strategy.

> Hi to all,
>
> adding my 5c to this discussion - the video has a bit more than 3500
> views (3642 to be precise at the time i checked). I found the number of
> views a bit contrary to the number of potential visualizations of
> English WP sites.
>
> all the best,
> /gheorghe
>
>
> On 18.08.2017 19:41, Joseph Seddon wrote:
> > Hey Lodewijk,
> >
> > Thanks for the e-mail on this. I'll get back to you after the weekend
> with
> > an expansive and complete response but wanted to acknowledge your e-mail
> > and agree that there is plenty to learn from, plenty that needs
> discussion
> > as a community and that we need to find out what our readers are
> interested
> > in receiving.
> >
> > Seddon
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 1:45 PM, Lodewijk <[hidden email]>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> Wikimania is well over, and now that everyone is slowly getting home,
> I'd
> >> like to touch on a hallway discussion that was going on during
> Wikimania.
> >> This was regarding the centralnotice banners advertizing a livestream of
> >> Katherine's and Christophe's presentation of the draft direction for the
> >> 2030 strategy.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: [hidden email]> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:[hidden email]?subject=unsubscribe>
>

> Hi all,
>
> Wikimania is well over, and now that everyone is slowly getting home, I'd
> like to touch on a hallway discussion that was going on during Wikimania.
> This was regarding the centralnotice banners advertizing a livestream of
> Katherine's and Christophe's presentation of the draft direction for the
> 2030 strategy.
>
> First a few quick facts:
> The banners were on Fri 11 Aug shown for 1,5 hour in 'emergency mode' on
> all English language projects (including Commons, meta) to all logged in,
> anonimous and mobile visitors. The campaigns can be found here
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WikimaniaLive>,
> here
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WikimaniaLiveLoggedin>and
> here
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WikimaniaLiveMobile>,
> for reference. The text in the banner was "Where will Wikipedia and
> Wikimedia be in 2030? Find out LIVE from Montreal" with a link to a youtube
> page with a stream <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdr2F8aB9y0> .
>
> I was quite taken by surprise with this, and taken aback. Here we were, the
> Wikimedia community telling all these visitors of Wikipedia and other
> projects that we are so important, that we should have them watch a
> presentation of a first draft of a direction of a strategy that still needs
> to be worked out. Not only was the text in the banner a bit misleading (I
> didn't see much crystal bowl gazing - but rather a statement of where we
> would like to go - but soit, I can overlook that), but it feels especially
> pretentious to me. Maybe this is a cultural matter, and in other cultures
> this kind of bragging (which is what it feels like to me) is normal.
>
> I could have understood an advertizement of this and other sessions to our
> logged in community members - that would actually have been a nice way of
> engaging them in an expensive conference that we would like more online
> audience to be part of. But only this session, and then all visitors of
> Wikimedia projects? No, thanks.
>
> Totally separate of the message displayed and whether we want to show it to
> this kind of large audience, I was surprised that this link was pointing to
> Youtube. This goes against our policies on Centralnotice
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Usage_guidelines>, stating:
> "Wikimedia Owned - Banners must link to Wikimedia controlled domains (owned
> either by Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia affiliates or Wikimedia
> Volunteers identified to the Wikimedia Foundation)." I guess there is a
> very remote interpretation possible that the channel is owned by the
> Wikimedia Foundation, and I did not see any indication that Youtube was
> running ads on that particular channel.
>
> I was unable to locate any community discussions or consultation about
> this. Could someone at the WMF share where this was discussed prior to the
> decision, and could they explain their reasoning? I'm not looking to blame
> anyone for this - shit happens - but I would like to see some discussion on
> what we want and dont want to do in this field, so that we can actually
> learn from this exercise. I was told in (very rapid and somewhat unwilling)
> hallway discussions that this was signed off by multiple layers of
> management at the WMF, so I assume some documented reasoning and
> consultation is available.
>
> Best,
> Lodewijk
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l> New messages to: [hidden email]> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[hidden email]?subject=unsubscribe>

Just briefly a short comment: visitors should be approached with messages
especially created for them. I am always sceptical of simply re-using a
content made for one context/audience for another context/audience.
Kind regards
Ziko

> I notice those youtube links didn't use the nocookie domain or display
> warnings about external youtube links, example being the previous WP
> Zero Petition <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/WPZeroPetition>
>
> On 18 August 2017 at 22:45, Lodewijk <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Wikimania is well over, and now that everyone is slowly getting home, I'd
> > like to touch on a hallway discussion that was going on during Wikimania.
> > This was regarding the centralnotice banners advertizing a livestream of
> > Katherine's and Christophe's presentation of the draft direction for the
> > 2030 strategy.
> >
> > First a few quick facts:
> > The banners were on Fri 11 Aug shown for 1,5 hour in 'emergency mode' on
> > all English language projects (including Commons, meta) to all logged in,
> > anonimous and mobile visitors. The campaigns can be found here
> > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:> CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WikimaniaLive>,
> > here
> > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:> CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WikimaniaLiveLoggedin>and
> > here
> > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:> CentralNotice&subaction=noticeDetail&notice=WikimaniaLiveMobile>,
> > for reference. The text in the banner was "Where will Wikipedia and
> > Wikimedia be in 2030? Find out LIVE from Montreal" with a link to a
> youtube
> > page with a stream <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdr2F8aB9y0> .
> >
> > I was quite taken by surprise with this, and taken aback. Here we were,
> the
> > Wikimedia community telling all these visitors of Wikipedia and other
> > projects that we are so important, that we should have them watch a
> > presentation of a first draft of a direction of a strategy that still
> needs
> > to be worked out. Not only was the text in the banner a bit misleading (I
> > didn't see much crystal bowl gazing - but rather a statement of where we
> > would like to go - but soit, I can overlook that), but it feels
> especially
> > pretentious to me. Maybe this is a cultural matter, and in other cultures
> > this kind of bragging (which is what it feels like to me) is normal.
> >
> > I could have understood an advertizement of this and other sessions to
> our
> > logged in community members - that would actually have been a nice way of
> > engaging them in an expensive conference that we would like more online
> > audience to be part of. But only this session, and then all visitors of
> > Wikimedia projects? No, thanks.
> >
> > Totally separate of the message displayed and whether we want to show it
> to
> > this kind of large audience, I was surprised that this link was pointing
> to
> > Youtube. This goes against our policies on Centralnotice
> > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Usage_guidelines>,
> stating:
> > "Wikimedia Owned - Banners must link to Wikimedia controlled domains
> (owned
> > either by Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia affiliates or Wikimedia
> > Volunteers identified to the Wikimedia Foundation)." I guess there is a
> > very remote interpretation possible that the channel is owned by the
> > Wikimedia Foundation, and I did not see any indication that Youtube was
> > running ads on that particular channel.
> >
> > I was unable to locate any community discussions or consultation about
> > this. Could someone at the WMF share where this was discussed prior to
> the
> > decision, and could they explain their reasoning? I'm not looking to
> blame
> > anyone for this - shit happens - but I would like to see some discussion
> on
> > what we want and dont want to do in this field, so that we can actually
> > learn from this exercise. I was told in (very rapid and somewhat
> unwilling)
> > hallway discussions that this was signed off by multiple layers of
> > management at the WMF, so I assume some documented reasoning and
> > consultation is available.
> >
> > Best,
> > Lodewijk
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: [hidden email]> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:[hidden email]?subject=unsubscribe>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: [hidden email]> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:[hidden email]?subject=unsubscribe>
>

This is my second attempt at replying because my first response was just
getting bogged down in detail. So I'm going to jump into the crux of the
issues.

Given the resources that goes into Wikimania I do personally think that we
have an obligation to try to maximise it's impact beyond the four walls of
the conference venue. There have long been discussions about what Wikimania
should be and the extent with which it could be leveraged as an outreach
tool and I think that recording and streaming are both tools to help it
reach it's potential. It comes up every single year and we manage to do it
better some years than others. It ultimately takes a lot of coordination,
some expertise and healthy dollop of time and a strong internet connection
(at some point along the pipeline).

This year the WMF, lead by the communications team, decided to experiment
with running a fairly lightweight live stream setup of the main conference
room and utilising it via social media, banners and a small segment of our
donor list. This isn't the first time such a banner has run for a keynote.
Something similar was done for one of the 2014 Wikimania Keynotes with the
main auditorium streamed throughout in a similarish fashion to this year.
We wanted to see what was possible, what could be learned, what should be
done differently and whether it was something that we felt would be worth
doing more of in the future. This was done with less planning that I would
have hoped and as a result there will be much to learn from it and there
will be a review of the streaming from this year and the activities around
it and I imagine there will be clear recommendations going forward to next
year.

In terms of CentralNotice and its usage, there is a quite rightly many a
question about whether this or any other usage of it is appropriate.
CentralNotice is possibly the most powerful non-profit communication tool
on the planet. So powerful that projects like Wiki Loves Monuments can
achieve world records with it. Questions that we have, as a movement, never
asked ourselves include how it could or should (an important difference) be
used, what do we consider an efficient or effective usage, what are our
readers interested in, what are our editors interested in, is it possible
to give them a choice rather than force them to see everything or nothing?
At the moment we lack the data to inform those conversations. I think a
good chuck could be solved by simply asking readers and editors what they
are interested in what they

>In terms of CentralNotice and its usage, there is a quite rightly many a
>question about whether this or any other usage of it is appropriate.
>CentralNotice is possibly the most powerful non-profit communication tool
>on the planet. So powerful that projects like Wiki Loves Monuments can
>achieve world records with it. Questions that we have, as a movement,
>never asked ourselves include how it could or should (an important
>difference) be used, what do we consider an efficient or effective usage,
>what are our readers interested in, what are our editors interested in,
>is it possible to give them a choice rather than force them to see
>everything or nothing?

I'm really struggling to understand what you're saying here. You seem to
be suggesting that the Wikimedia movement has never asked itself about
CentralNotice spam. I happen to know that you're very aware of extensive
discussions about the use of CentralNotice on this mailing list, on
Meta-Wiki, and elsewhere. You ("Seddon (WMF)") heavily edited this page in
2016: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Usage_guidelines>.
This page was created in May 2011. And even in May 2011 (over six years
ago now), the overuse and abuse of CentralNotice was not a new topic.

Given this, it's really difficult to understand what you mean when you
suggest that reasonable considerations, such as not showing a stupid
advertisement to every user, have somehow been overlooked to date. The
exact opposite is demonstrably true and you know this.

Seddon was mostly agreeing with the sentiments here, so I don’t think it’s at all difficult to understand him. Granted, I’ve worked on CentralNotice and am familiar with the WMF’s internal discourse about the tool, and I even have some experience picking through Seddon’s coarse brogue ;-)

Specifically, Seddon summed it up with:
> In terms of CentralNotice and its usage, there is a quite rightly many a
> question about whether this or any other usage of it is appropriate.

Questions about WMF and community CentralNotice usage have come up on this list regularly, but never get anywhere, so yes we have discussed but the broader movement hasn’t prioritized the question and there don’t seem to be guidelines beyond “Avoid constant use!” [1].

When I was on the WMF’s Fundraising Tech team, we suspected that the greatest obstacle to collaborative management of these resources is simply:

> At the moment we lack the data to inform those conversations.

There’s a long-standing task to make CentralNotice banner impression counts public [2], please comment and upvote there if you agree this might help us have measured debate about campaigns in the future. Of course, even once we can discuss impression counts there’s still a long road ahead: we’ll want to measure banner effectiveness in a uniform way, and will of course churn the policies for acceptable use.

In the meantime, note that you can request impression counts for specific campaigns. I’m sure my colleagues will love that I suggested this.

> I think a good chuck could be solved by simply asking readers and editors what they are interested in

@seddon: Sounds cool, can you speak more about that idea? How might that look for anonymous readers? Is there already a Phabricator task?